Unit War Diaries - Family Research

Image: Anzacs swimming and relaxing at Anzac Cove.

Australian in the Great War consulting military historian, Graham Wilson says there has never been a better time to delve into family military histories to get an idea of what Great Uncle Bob actually did in the Great War. A good place to start searching for details of the types of duties and action seen are the official War Diaries. Each formation and unit of the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) kept a war diary during the war. These were written on an official form and recorded the day by day activities of the unit; each section of a diary theoretically covered a month and copies were forwarded to various agencies at the end of the month. In addition to the standard pro forma, many diaries include annexes of information dealing with unit operations and administration. War diaries have been digitized and are available to view and download for free at the Australian War Memorial’s website.

Hints:

• Some diaries are better than others; some diaries are little more than two or three pages per month, containing terse and uninformative one line entries, while others are multi-page documents for each month with detailed accounts of each day’s happenings and useful annexes.
• Diaries very, very rarely mention non-officers by name.

If you get stuck or want more information you can contact Graham through Military Voice.

About Graham :

Graham served 26 years in the Australian Regular Army, retiring in 1996 as a Warrant Officer Intelligence Analyst. Following five years as a civilian intelligence officer in the Department of Defence, he transferred to the Defence Department’s Directorate of Honours and Awards where he worked for 10 years in the support and policy areas; the latter as Staff Officer Historical Research. Graham retired from the Public Service in February 2011 and now works as a historian. Graham is active in a number of historical and militaria societies and is a prolific author of historical articles; he has been published in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA and has received a number of awards for military history writing. He has published two books, 'Bully Beef and Balderdash' and 'Dust Donkeys and Delusions'. His latest book due for release shortly.